"I will play football with Venus"? Does this make sense in England, or is just weird anywhere?

Heh - kinda funny. .

Then again:

1. He's been in the senate for 3 short year

2. He's half Kenyan, half Kansan, has a misture of muslim/atheist/christian relatives from across the globe and it didn't matter. He won in all-white Iowa.

3. His first name is "Barack"

4. His middle name is "Hussein"

5. His last name is "Obama"

6. He just beat the wife of the most popular Democratic president in history and the entire democratic establishment.

7. He is the first person in the history of American politics to turn out the youth vote in such a magnitude.

and, to me, most surprising:

8. He's running on "hope" and "unity" when his party is at it's angriest and most partisan stage in a generation.

Maybe walking sharks are next?

This would be a better country if we used phrases like "Messianic wibble" more frequently.

and he did this!!

www.washingtonpost.com/.../AR2008010303303.html

Yes, I am obsessed with the death penalty legislation, but now someone else is talking about it, so I have another link to flog. THis one is extra good, though, really. Extra extra good.

I need sleep.

Whoa, whoa VA.  The most popular Dem president in history?  You mean Obama beat Eleanor Roosevelt?  My man, BJ never got 50% of the vote.  He ain't all that.

*gasp*  A reader of The Guardian isn't moved by something truly wonderful (for once) coming out of American civic action?  Well, color ME chastened.

I think the Venus comment is just absurdity.  I like it.  

Though I don't know what people except from a victory speech.  Drabness?

It is indeed amazing, though I'm not sure what "it" is. Is the real story here Obama or his followers? The man as he actually is or the projections of people desperate to believe in another sunny American wise innocent promising morning in America in a time of unrelenting bad news?

Dept. of Wibble:

www.prospect.org/.../ezraklein_archive

And I'd like to second Tep.

Ok Tep, what is the "man as he actually is" in your view? Why not pull back the curtain for us? That's what I try to do: www.washingtonpost.com/.../AR2008010303303.html

Now show me yours.

I think he meant, "twit."

He's first and foremost a _writer_. Not a writer like those French pols or Churchill who turn their attention to Grand Themes of History, but a writer of bildungsromans (he's already written two) trying to tease out meaning from what is without question a very complex and fascinating life.

Second, he's a lawyer, specifically, a Con Law prof. He has a very deft mind and a natural instinct for complexity, nuance, irony, contradiction.

Third, he's a preacher manque. "Community activist" in the secular version, but basically someone who's much more comfortable with getting his mind around ideas and then communicating his insights than he is with actually forcing things through. If there'd been a revolution on South Side Chicago, Obama would have written a good book about it, but I doubt he would have played a leading role. I can't think of anything substantial he achieved in his four years of contempl- er community activizing.

All of which is to say, he's exactly the kind of guy I'd want for my best friend. He's not too high on the list of people I'd tap to provide dynamic, creative, forceful leadership that overcomes massive obstacles that don't fall into his "partisan divide" box.

Namely, China UHC recession+dollar's decline+ economic insecurity Mexico/immigration Asian Power Politics Iran Iraq Turkey Russia decliningRealWages ....

Look, I LIKE THE GUY. He's a **good guy.** But so were Hart and Tsongas and Bradley, the first of which was/is not a bad writer. And so was Mike Dukakis. I would like to believe that our party can do better and can find someone whose major concern as an adult has been not to discover his identity but to understand, on its own terms, that extraordinarily complex, difficult, dangerous Asian theatre from which all the major threats to our prosperity and security are likely to originate in the next 8 years.

I am shocked, supporters cheer for their professed candidate so some snarky british wanker thinks he is clever by comparing it to messiah worship. As I have told some british people I knew when I lived in China, just because we speak the same language does not mean I give a shit about your opinion about America.

Only a Brit could call someone a tit and have it work, but I'll give the rest of it a C+. The rest of it was gibberish and I usually hold British put downs, with their tight but powerful literary flourishes attached to some remarkably obscene smack downs, in high regard. Christopher Hitchens comes to mind.

Tep, you're missing something basic about Obama - he inspires people.  No matter how many "yeah buts" anyone comes up with about him or that part of his campaign, he seems to bring out the best in people and that's the gist here.  

The ideal is to bring inspired people into this (this being the major overhaul our government, political culture and international relations needs), have a President with the confidence, heart and maturity to listen carefully to good ideas from the right people (whether he "likes" them or not), ignore intrusive emotionality from all sides, learn quickly and act intelligently (Lincoln comes to mind, of course).  One guy can't do it all, nor is he asking us to believe he can.  This is a movement, not a coronation.

teplukhin2you,

you're a smart guy with some genuine insights, but to speak frankly, your 'it's-the-threat-from-Asia-stupid' line is getting pretty tiresome.

I think that you hold a seriously unrealistic view both as to what it takes to get elected president and what it takes to lead as president once elected.  Evidence, your near-monomaniacal support of Biden.  Whatever his fo-po cred, the guy was a dud candidate, obviously so, as confirmed by his performance two nights ago.  You have to take the world as it is, not as you'd like it to be.  IMHO what we need in a president is not a foreign policy guru/hard nosed negotiator, but someone with brains, ethics, and an ability to communicate all of which Obama has in spades.  

And anyway, who says you're right about where the next big challenge is going to come?  If you ask me, I'd say that the China Central Bank's dollar positions don't make a shit bit of difference to our long term survival.  Global warming's gonna fuck us all a hell of a lot harder than any little foreign credit collapse.  That, of course, is my personal bias.  But where I part ways with you, is I'm not going to let that bias turn me off Obama to go pining for an Al Gore run that ain't gonna happen.

Finally, my judgment is that Obama's got stones, as big and hard has required for the POTUS.  Other's, of course, are free to disagree.

P.S.  A lot of you seemed not to get the sarcastic point of the original post.  It was SUPPOSED to be gibberish.  The poster was taking the position that Obama's speech represented a lot of messianic nonsense, no more meaningful than expressing his intention to 'play football with Venus' would have been.   I don't agree with the sentiment, but you have to give the writer his due, he was saying something, not nothing.

Hey aeromanas, great post.  Tep has a point, but is a constant goal-post mover with Obama.

As far as our British ranter goes - you don't get credit if you didn't clearly make your point.  I think you gave them more credit than they deserve but that speaks well of you - good on ya.  

I agree about Obama's stones. One example: way before Rudy's ridiculous campaign began going into to freefall, way before the NIE report, back several months when the the latest vanity trend was "bombing Iran" whatever that mean, he said straight-forwardly - he'd speak to Iran. Right now. No conditions. Period.  

Not "I plan on looking soulfully into the Iranian President's heart and asking for the key to his nukes" not even "I think there's a way through this with diplomacy" just that he'd go to them, speak with them ASAP.  

That took nads and it makes plain old good sense, no posturing, no hedging, just good sense. Who knows what would happen? He didn't say he knew, just that he'd go.  Imagine that.

aero-walto - fine, fine, I'll lay off. My hat's off to Obama. But be warned, the q's I've raised for him are mild compared to the q's he needs to answer. Not now, maybe, or this week or next, but someday before the first Tuesday in November.

Wandrey's point re talking to Iran is fairly taken, though to be honest it takes a lot more, or I guess I should say bigger, "stones" to tell Democratic party activists what they don't want to cater to their fondest beliefs.

Anyway I'm glad he's running a good campaign, he seems like a good guy, and of course I'll vote for him in the fall should he continue to go from strength to strength. Long campaign, though. Let's see whether Hillary can up her game and give Obama a chance to develop, or show us, some more steel in his spine.

Ya think Tep? The press is pretty shallow more often than not - personality and quip driven - how else to explain the Huckmeister?  Maybe Obama would need to bone up on Asian specifics for an interview on McNeil Leher or a speakers spot at the Aspen Institute, but I can't imagine the general being anymore challenging in this way than now.  

And even if it is somehow, I think he'd man up pretty well and represent, even dazzle - with good sense and enough knowledge to answer intelligently.  

It's hard to see through his visual image and the hoopla in to the fact that he has has an abundance of what my grandfather used to call horse sense.  He even referred to it obliquely when he recently commented that being raised  by midwesterners had the most impact on his outlook: mistrust of extraneous flowery verbage, a high value placed on a straight-forward - even simple when applicable - approach.  That's what compelling - to me anyway - his crystal clear, straightforward thought process.  He's not a messiah or a savior and good for him for challenging us on that - no one is, we're all responsible for this mess.

The hope thing does have it's limits.  I fantasize about him to making Al Gore head of  the EPA on day one and signing or overturning law after law after law after stupid, thoughtless law - quickly, we hardly have any time to waste.  That doesn't seem like our golden boy though.

He's good at one-step-at-a-time stuff, much better than I'd ever be,

Tep, Obama spent some of his childhood in Southeast Asia, Indonesia has a large chinese population in Jakarta and many of his classmates were of Chinese descent as well. What makes you think he has no understanding of that region? He just might have more than you and I put together since he lived like a local and not in an expat community.

Obama has the same effect on me that he seems to have had on the Brit.  I think he is about messianic nonsense, typically American fan mania, fueled by youth and high-minded rhetoric.  If he wins the nomination I will support him against any Republican, but i have yet to see anything of substance to the man, and I fear his apparent commitment to moderation and compromise (hardly characteristics I would associate with real agents of change).

Neil

Neil! And to a lesser extent Tep!

Just because he's all inspiring and charismatic doesn't mean he's not the wonk you want. He just has the sense to lead with the woods, but he's got trees. He's got style AND substance, and if you can't see the latter you aren't looking, and so here- silver platter!:

1. laundry list:

obsidianwings.blogs.com/.../barack_obama.html

2. jewel in the crown:

www.samefacts.com/.../obama_against_police_torture.php